Foreword

When you use a browser to see a given page on a Web site, you may want to save it on your own computer for instance for further quotation.
In order to recover an exploitable formatted text, I wrote in 1996 a program that converts the HTML file into an RTF file.
At that time, no text processing softawres could import HTML files.
The RTF format (Rich text Format) contains all the information about text and characters styles and can be opened with most word processing softwares like Word or OpenOffice.

Nowadays, text processing software usually manage HTML format, but this software can still be useful.

What you recover

For example, the RTF file created by my program is processable by Word or OpenOffice which reconstitute a style sheet and attributes styles to the paragraphes, as well as bold, italics formats to characters.

HTML tables are converted into Word Processing tables with cells
<STRONG> or <EM> instructions correspond to bold text.
<A HREF = ....> instructions have the text rendered as underlined (like by the browser).
<TABLE> instructions are translated into tables with real cells
etc...

All HTML markers are not handled, but most of them (including HTML 3 intructions) are. The first purpose of this program is to get a word processing formatted text at the end, with all the text but not necessarily all the formats.

Information about the program itself

The program is runable on PC/DOS or Windows operating system.

Version 32 bits (19 September 2007)	Version 16 bits (1997)
click here to download version 1.9.1	click here to download 16 bits version

The 32 bit version only will be maintained. It is compiled with Free Pascal Compiler for Windows.

From DOS, you can specify the name of the input file on the command line, like ishtar.exe my_file.htm or no file name at all. In the latter case, it will be asked to you on line.

The program can be launched from windows too of course (and opens a DOS window). In this case, if you directly click on the name ishtar.exe in the file manager window, it will have no argument and will then ask you the name of the input file. Otherwise, you can drag the input file with the mouse and put it over the name ishtar.com in the file manager window. It will launch the program with that file as an input.

If the input file is FILENAME.ext (whatever "ext" may be), the output file will be FILENAME.RTF. Of course, if the input file already has the extension .RTF, there will be a problem... In this case, you will be asked a filename for the output file. This output file will be located in the same directory as the input file.

If the output file already exists, you will be warned and asked if it can be overwritten or if you want to give the output file another name.

Important information : the program creates a log file named "martha.log" in the directory of the program itself. this file contains information on tags that have not been processed, or syntaxic errors found in the HTML file... But it's in French !

License

This program can be used without any restriction, but without any warranty.

It can be transferred to any third party, or redistributed on internet sites, with the only 2 following restrictions :

it must indicate that the author is Yves Sagnier, of CENA;
it must not be sold but given free of charge.

It can be incorporated inside another software intended to be sold if it respects the 2 conditions above : no extra charge for it, and indicate its usage and the name of the author.

Other information

I would be pleased to get information on its use and its possible enhancements.

This page is maintained by Yves SAGNIER. My email address : ysagnier@yahoo.fr

Last modified on 26 September 2007.

This page has been visited times since 15 August 2004.